Mayan Motor Mayhem: Dealers Offer Free Cars If The World Ends

To fuel your love of cars,

We’re just a few weeks away from the big event — not Christmas, not Wright Brothers Day, but the end of Planet Earth.

Well, at least if Mayans are correct.

Most of us seem to have forgotten about the whole world-ending-on-December-21 thing. Maybe we were distracted by a contentious presidential election. Or maybe we think end-of-the-world predictions are passe. They do feel a little 2011, after all.

But a collection of General Motors dealers in Canada is banking on the Mayans — not that their predictions of doom and gloom are correct, but that the public fascination with those predictions will drive year-end sales.

The Humberview Group owns four Buick, Chevrolet, and Cadillac dealerships around the Toronto area. And from now through the end of, well, everything, the Group is holding a special sales promotion.

The “End of the World Clearance Event” is detailed on MyNextGM.ca, The offers on hand aren’t too different from those you’ll find at other dealerships this December, but Humberview dealers offer one additional, easy-to-keep promise: “If the world ends, you don’t pay!”

As ad campaigns go, this one’s a winner: funny, well-designed, and thorough. The doomsday clock on the front page is a great touch, as are the series of radio spots that riff on the coming apocalypse.

If all advertising were this thoughtful, we might have some hope for the world’s future. As it is…well, let’s talk in a few weeks.